title: An integrated virtual family curriculum to introduce specialty-specific clinical skills to rising third-year medical students.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Transitioning from a preclinical to a clinical curriculum can be challenging for medical students. As a central component of a new 3-week transition course, we designed, implemented, and evaluated an innovative Virtual Family Curriculum to introduce rising 3rd-year medical students to the knowledge, skills, and cultures of 6 core medical and surgical specialties.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors designed a 6-case, 24-hour, 3-generation Virtual Family Curriculum and a 6-station summative Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Each case contains a lecture, video, discussion questions, skills practice, and faculty guide. We used both qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Ninety-eight students took the inaugural course in 2012. All students passed the final OSCE. Students rated the virtual family curriculum a 5.17/6 (6 = highest). Comments about the curriculum were uniformly positive.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We created and implemented an integrated Virtual Family Curriculum that systematically teaches specialty-specific knowledge and skills. This curriculum facilitates students' transition to clinical clerkships.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Family Medicine , Alpert Medical School of Brown University , Providence , Rhode Island , USA.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: George
authors.forename: Marina M C
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: MacNamara
authors.forename: Jamie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gainor
authors.forename: Julie Scott
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Taylor
mesh_terms: D002982:Clinical Clerkship; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003479:Curriculum; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D006801:Humans; D013038:Specialization; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface